8th November 2010, 20:26
| #1 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 305
Thanked: 37 Times
| Our diwali celebrations and trip... WENT TO A PLANNED PLACE TO FIND SOMETHING BUT FOUND NOTHING, WENT TO A UNPLANNED PLACE AND FOUND EVERYTHING. (Prelude of the trip that happened ahead) It all started l2 weeks ago on our regular weekend night drives(30th oct). Myself and Raj.barcode(AKA Sriraj) decided we needed a long outing, He suggested we go to mysore but i felt mysore is like any other weekend drive that we do on weekends. So we started thinking of other places to visit but we had orders from mrs sriraj  that the travel time should not exceed more than 4.5hrs because his 2yr old daughter Advita was joining us and she did not want her to get exhausted. It was on Tuesday morning 2nd november when it hit me and i googled a bit and found the right spot which met all our priorities/orders. After reading a lot of reviews and recent t-bhp travelogues we decided to go to Bandipur for the weekend. So got online to JLR website to check for the availability of rooms and since my system had starting acting up i asked Sriraj to check it. There were rooms available for the 6th and 7th november so we tried to book the rooms online. But as we would come to know technology always gives haath when you need it the most and we ended up with an incomplete booking/transaction. Sriraj called up the JLR guys and told them what had happened and the coversation must have been something like this. Sriraj: Hello i just messed up the online transaction, what should i do ? JLR rep: Sir its ok lots of guests mess it up. I'll do a thing and block the rooms for one day. if you can come down and pay the amount at our office i will confirm it else it will be unblocked tomorrow. Sriraj: Ok i will arrange for somebody to come down in person thank you. Next phone call was to me and it went something like this... Sriraj: Hi rocky i just messed up the online transaction so they need somebody to go down to shringar complex next to barton center on MG Road. Me(I had some personal work near anand rao circle so told I will go):Barton center ?? where is that ?(I am an idiot when it comes to builing and places names). Sriraj: (Gave some instructions). Me: Ok sir ( Though I did not unserstand one bit of his instruction I just pretended I understood it.) Sorry sriraj sir( The whole conversation is just a joke) Then I frantically started calling friends to find the address of this place and one of my friends gave me the right instructions and i ended up at the right place and made the payment and got the booking confirmation done Next day Wednesday 3rd November I spoke to Sriraj and we decided to burst the ton of crackers we had bought on 4th and 5th November itself. Thursday 4th November went about our work till evening and decided to meet up at sriraj’s house at 7.30pm. But as always due to some issues I reached his place only by 8.45pm. finally we started bursting crackers by about 9pm. Here are some sights and scenes from the diwali masti. Sriraj's daughter advita.  My soon to be wife with Addhu.  Me lighting some crackers  Mrs sriraj and Addhu  Cracker 1  Cracker 2  Same thing happened on 5th November aswell. TO BE CONTINUED.......... Last edited by rocky080 : 8th November 2010 at 20:28. |
|
| |
|
8th November 2010, 20:32
| #2 |
| BHPian  | The Diwali celebrations was just too good; it was excellent and the same was bettered by the presence of Mr and Mrs rocky, the travelogue is a long one and it will probably take Rocky a week to narrate ;  continue .  |
|
|
|
8th November 2010, 20:52
| #3 |
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
| |
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 12:03
| #4 | ||
| Senior - BHPian  Join Date: Jan 2010 Location: TSTN
Posts: 6,236
Thanked: 9,643 Times
| Quote:
Quote:
 | ||
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 12:04
| #5 | |
| BHPian | Quote:
It is Advita which means Unique. Source: Advita | Meaning of Advita Name If the roads are good my daughter will be alright; she sits fine when we travel for Belgaum cause she likes roads to be superfine Last edited by raj.barcode : 9th November 2010 at 12:13. | |
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 12:25
| #6 | ||
| Senior - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: City of seven islands.
Posts: 2,877
Thanked: 231 Times
| Quote:
First we had a plan. Then we had a trip that went all around against the plan. That's my kind of trips off late. Plan to see how all we can bypass the plan. Anyway, I now am limiting the kilometers I'm travelling. Rocky and Raj need to come back quicker and not keep us waiting. Quote:
A-Dwita = no second like that = unique! Now if I can crack a joke and not hurt your sentiments, if you have another kid, will you call her/ him as Atrita? (no third one like that!) Waiting for more saar. I love it when babies travel. | ||
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 12:40
| #7 |
| BHPian Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 305
Thanked: 37 Times
| Continued..... And finally D-Day 6th Nov arrives  .I was very excited about the trip and could not sleep properly the whole night. So got up at 5.30am went to my aunt's place and dropped my dog of at her place and got back home at 7.30am. Came back home and was feeling a little tired due to lack of sleep. Had not packed any of my stuff except for my camera kit. So decided to take a nap as it was just a one day trip, i would not be needing a lot of stuff and can be packed in 15mins. At 9am i got a call from sriraj asking me whether i was packed. We had initially planned to leave Bangalore by around 10-10.30. Then immediately realising i was late, iwoke up packed my stuff and took a bath and got ready(by which time my fiance joined me). I was ready by 10am and was waiting for sriraj to pick us up. 10 became 11 during which i called sriraj many times and he said he is almost ready(Baby stuff needs lot of planning and preparation), 11 became 12 and finally i call him and he said he was on his way to my place. Finally he arrived at my place around 12.45 pm and we started of taking the bannerghatta road towards Nice road and joined mysore road around 1.40pm. Our estimated time of arrival at Bandipur was 5pm traffic permitting. So we tried to drive like the wind but failed as the traffic was quite heavy till chennapatna. So we decided to take a break at the Mc donalds outlet near chennapatna. It was 2.50pm when we reached Mc donalds we ordered burgers with and without cheese and searched for a parking spot but it was way too crowded, so moved on till we came up to a tree with a nice cool shade on the road side and set up camp there had our so called lunch and left. The traffic let up a little after reaching maddur so made up lost time and reached mysore around 4.00 pm. we took the mysore outer ring road which is only partly finished to avoid city traffic to get to nanjangudu-ooty road near the foothills of chamundi betta. The roads were quite bad till this point and on reaching nanjangudu i spotted the infamous bus train and stopped for a photo session. Finished that up and started off again towards bandipur, a few kilometers later the road improved a bit and we again made up lost time and we were only behind schedule by 30mins.We finally arrived at bandipur jungle loges at 5.30pm. As soon as we reached we were greeted with a cup of coffee and a plate onion bajji. After polished up all of these we checked into our rooms and freshened up a bit and were ready within 10mins but we realised we had missed the safari ride into the jungle which left without us at 4.40pm  . So then we had no option but to take the safari in the morning and we still had about 1 1/2 hours for our next scheduled activity planned for us by the JLR guys. So we decided to go for a drive inside the park hoping to spot something on the roads. But to our dismay it started getting dark very fast and by about 6.30-6.40 it was pitch dark. we reached the bandipur forest rangers office and finding nothing turned back towards our resort. Here are the co-relating pics for the story so far. Heavy traffic that slowed us down till chenapatna  Ordering our burgers  Roadside luch stop.  Feeding the little one.  Mr Bachan stopped by to say hi to us.  Clear roads after maddur.  The beautiful sky enroute.  The sun kept playing hide and seek with us.  Entering the mysore outer ring road.  Chamundi hills seen at the exit of the ring road  Infamous Bus train found near nanjanagudu.  front shot  side shot  Controls and guages  Took a peak inside the hood and guess what ? we actually found an engine though already scavenged for some parts  Heavy duty Wheels and suspension  Passenger seats  The meter guage this train operated on.  The now used broad guage for comparison.  Pics will continue.... Last edited by rocky080 : 9th November 2010 at 12:47. |
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 13:30
| #8 |
| BHPian Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 305
Thanked: 37 Times
| pics continued from previous post..... Greenery enroute 1  Greenery enroute 2  Greenery enroute 3  Entrance of jungle lodge bandipur  Waiting for our coffee/tea and onion bajji.  Giant mosquitoes, this one was named godzilla   Random pic 1  Random pic 2  Addu playing with Mrs sriraj  Polishing up the onion bajji  Next set is the beautiful step by step sunset from bandipur brought exclusively for everybody's pleasure.         |
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 15:27
| #9 |
| BHPian | |
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 15:45
| #10 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 94
Thanked: 10 Times
| |
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 15:50
| #11 |
| BHPian Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 305
Thanked: 37 Times
| First day it was only diagnoses so have not written anything about it yet. Repairs happened on sunday the 7th, details of which will come up tomorrow. Anyways i don't have any pics of the repairs(Assistant photographer was busy chatting  ) as you can remember both of us had our hands dirty while the ladies were happily chatting away without even looking at what their hulking men were upto.Yup pics are on the way so keep on watching... Last edited by rocky080 : 9th November 2010 at 15:51. |
|
|
| |
|
9th November 2010, 18:10
| #12 |
| BHPian  Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Pune, Vadodara
Posts: 528
Thanked: 463 Times
| |
|
|
|
9th November 2010, 18:28
| #13 |
| BHPian Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 305
Thanked: 37 Times
| [quote=advaitlele;2134449]@Raj - good log coming up it seems. The bus-train pics are new to me; never seen anything like this. And why is it "infamous"? Anything more on this please?quote] That's my bad. I meant to tell famous but don't know how it got replaced with infamous  . |
|
|
|
10th November 2010, 10:52
| #14 |
| BHPian Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Bangalore
Posts: 305
Thanked: 37 Times
| Continued.... Once we reached our resort there was a small wild life movie that was arranged for us at 7.30pm. The movie was called " The wild dog diaries " pretty interesting movie. And i did not know that wild dogs were that difficult to spot as i have spotted them most of the times during my nagarhole trips. Anyways after the movie we had our dinner which was pretty tasty with both veg and non-veg combinations. We were informed that there would be a wake up call at 5.45 am for the safari ride. So all of us retired to our respective cottages in sight of the early morning. The moment i fell on the bed i was fast asleep. As expected they were punctual enough and woke us up at 5.30. I was ready by 6am. we were informed that tea/coffee would be ready at the dinner hall so all of us made our way to the dinner hall and had tea/coffee. by 6.30am we reached the main entrance of the resort and the safari vehicles were ready. I was shown the way to a bus type of vehicle but i wanted a jeep so went to the organiser and requested him to give us a jeep. That's when i realised that we had been named as the late people/people who arrived late yesterday  , I had also heard the same thing from another employee of JLR the previous day but did not pay much attention to it. So coming back to the story we started of in the same bus type safari vehicle as jeep was already booked and man-o-man was it cold or what. This bus had no window and it was completely open except for the roof we entered the jungle and the follwing pics is all we could find. my intension was to spot a couple of elephants and maybe and leopard and a tiger and hence the opening statement found nothing in planned place.The moment i saw these guys i got an infiriority complex everyone of them had real heavy duty photographic equipment.  Small elephant we saw at the roadside before entering the forest.  Forest department office.  A spotted deer with big horns sorry for the quality of the pics the stupid bus driver never stopped for us to photograph them properly.  Pea fowl  Lush green forest.  The safari path taken by us.  One peacock  A giant malabar squirrel  A lone bison grazing away  This is all we found in the entire 2.5 hour safari ride. To be continued........ |
|
|
|
10th November 2010, 11:09
| #15 |
| BHPian | i guess we were pretty unlucky as days before that they apparently found 2 tigers, 1 leopard and a sloth bear in wild how i wish we had done the trip a couple of days back |
|
|
 |
Most Viewed